


'til the morning breaks

by heartbreakordeath



Category: Bastille (Band)
Genre: Apocalypse, Last Day On Earth, Multi, based on doom days, shameless lyrical references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:42:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24729157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartbreakordeath/pseuds/heartbreakordeath
Summary: “The world is ending tonight, you know.”Good, he thinks. It’s about time.ok i'm ALMOST late but it's STILL the 14th here so...happy birthday doom days <3
Comments: 16
Kudos: 17





	'til the morning breaks

“The world is ending tonight, you know.”

_Good,_ he thinks. _It’s about time._

She’s too close to him, perfume clouding his senses as she leans in even further and continues in a conspiratorial whisper. “Do you know what that means?”  
  


 _I don’t care_ , he wants to say, because he knows what _she_ thinks it means. His mind is like that too, sometimes- on those lonely nights when it’s all that he needs. But here, tonight, it’s the last thing on his mind. Maybe it shouldn’t be- after all, it might be the last time he gets the chance to do whatever the fuck he wants.

But what _does_ he want?

“It _means_ ,” the woman continues, trailing a finger down his shoulder in a way that makes his skin crawl and a shiver shoot down his spine. He doesn’t waste time trying to figure out whether it’s a good feeling or a bad one. _What does it mean? That you finally have the excuse to use the cheesiest pickup line in the history of the universe?_

“Let’s stay up all night,” she says instead, after a moment. She stands, offering him a hand, towering over him in her heeled boots. He looks up at her, at the dark hair framing a vaguely familiar face that he’s spent the past few hours mapping the contours of in the bubble of the old, ratty couch in the corner.

It’s a bad decision to make, he knows. The red light is still flashing in the corner of his vision- a digital clock, projected onto the wall of the living room by someone who evidently has _no_ idea how to read a room. Frankly, it’s a terrible idea, considering the circumstances. But what other choices does he have, now?

~

He’s being pulled into another room, someone swapping his empty beer bottle with a cup of something that smells far too much like the scented cleaner his roommate keeps under the bathroom sink for his liking. He ends up downing it anyways, of course, when his friends and their friends and _their_ friends crowd around him and start an astonishingly bad drinking game that lasts about ten minutes before there’s more alcohol on Dan’s clothes than in his cup.

_What are we_ **_doing_** _?_ Dan thinks helplessly as someone refills his cup for the fourth or fifth time. _Is this really the way I’m going to spend my last night? I’ll drink myself to death before the sun’s even up._

He flinches as the whole house shakes, hard enough to make the windows rattle in their frames. Whether it’s the bass from the oversized speakers or the storm outside, he can’t tell. _Bold of me to assume the sun’s ever going to come up._

~

Maybe he’s changed his mind after all, he thinks an hour later, as he trips up the stairs, hands bundled in the hem of the stranger’s shirt. It sure _feels_ like he wants this, if the lips against his neck and the sparks it sends through his body are any indication.

He’s not quite sure how he ended up here, hands all over yet another stranger. The rooms are spinning in his vision, blurring into one as he’s pulled into an empty bedroom and the unfamiliar man’s arms again. 

_You know_...he’d said to Dan, with that look in his eye, and Dan had shut him up the only way he knew how to. Yeah, he _knew_. He knew everything. Why else would he be here?

_Not now_ , he murmurs. _Leave it ‘til the morning._

_Give me something to remember. Something better than that._

So the stranger does, and then they’re in a dark corner of the room, barely out of the reach of all the prying eyes, holding on for dear life.

(In hindsight, maybe not the _best_ distraction tactic...but hey, it works in the moment.)

~

At some point, it comes to Dan’s attention that the bedroom is not, in fact, fully unoccupied. The woman from earlier pulls away from her current distraction to face him, raising her eyebrows, and a laugh bubbles up in his throat at the coincidence. He looks from her to his other stranger, both of them looking half lost and half...not _quite_ turned off by the turn in events.

It’s probably his last night on Earth. Theirs, too. It’s not like it’s something he’d _refuse_ under normal circumstances.

_Why the fuck not, then?_

~

No, he realizes, finally. _This_ is where he needs to be. 

It’s not like he _regrets_ anything that’s happened tonight- far from it. But now, it’s 4am, according to the scarlet numbers still visible on the wall. The music has dropped to a volume low enough for Dan to hear himself think, which he quickly discovers is a terrible thing, after all the hours he spent complaining about it. After all of his efforts to shut up the handsome stranger before...he finds himself thinking about it anyways.

But it’s alright, now, because he’s not alone with his thoughts. His friends are all around him, hanging off of the arms of chairs and smushed next to each other on the overstuffed couches, limbs overlapping carelessly. They won’t let him fall into himself again.

The sea of faces- some familiar, most unfamiliar- are enough to even out his breathing until he stops letting it all overwhelm him. There’s nowhere he’d rather be, now. 

It’s small talk, really. Going around in circles, trying to come up with any topic that doesn’t involve the real world. Often-told stories of ex-boyfriends and girlfriends and partners; stupid, harmless jokes; old contextless anecdotes that get passed around as the room fills with smoke and laughter.

Someone passes him a joint eventually, and it only goes past one other person before he changes his mind and takes it back. He wishes he could say it’s been a while, that it normally didn’t do anything besides make him far more anxious than usual, but distractions recently have been hard to come by, and he’ll take whatever he can get. 

Maybe it’s the weed. Maybe it’s the people. It doesn’t matter at this point, does it? But as he starts sinking through the floor, surrounded by stories of better times, everything’s suddenly... _okay_.

For now.

~

Consciousness returns with a gust of stale air that blows through the kitchen’s open window and into Dan’s lungs. He lays there for a moment with half-lidded eyes, afraid of what he might see if he opens them further. His brain whirs with thoughts of an arid wasteland, a deserted house with the roof blown clean off, the remains of friends and people he’d known for five minutes mixed in with the rubble around him. 

_Welcome to the end of the world, I guess._

Dan squeezes his eyes shut, pulse spiking as he curls his legs up to his chest to make sure they’re still there. Two legs? Check. Two shoes? Check. All twenty fingers and toes? Most likely. Some of the tension seeps out of him once he realizes he’s still very much alive- and also very, _very_ hungover. 

Maybe he’s miraculously survived the night. He could be the only person alive in the house- or the city, or the country. Maybe he’s already dead, and just doesn’t know it yet. Maybe this is the way it ends for him: waking up on a cold tile floor in some stranger’s flat, reliving his last day on Earth over and over like a sickeningly ironic version of _Groundhog Day_. Maybe he’ll never leave this place- stay here, stuck in the familiar, going around in circles again and again until he blows his own brains out. 

Slowly, a noise penetrates the sleepy haze in his mind, and he slowly raises his head. It’s a bird, of all things, chirping outside the open window. It’s so... _annoyingly_ mundane that he chokes out something between a laugh and a sob, breaking the early-morning silence. 

Sunlight streams into the room, illuminating the crushed Solo cups in a pile by the trash can, half-opened cabinets raided of anything resembling food, and the lone shoe that sits by the doorway. The light’s brighter than it should be, even with his massive hangover, but that’s to be expected. It’s been so long that he barely remembers what it used to look like.

But the house isn’t underwater; it’s not in flames; it’s not destroyed. It’s still there, and so is he.

There’s voices, too, coming from the hallway. A laugh. A _clunk_ and _oh, fuck, ow_ , as someone’s foot connects with a discarded bottle on the floor. Dan sighs and reaches for his phone, frowning when his hand touches the pocket of his jeans and finds nothing.

It’s almost on cue that a voice calls out, “Oi, whose phone is this? It won’t stop fucking ringing.”

Dan rolls his eyes. _Of course._ “Sorry,” he tries to call out, voice hoarse from the night.

He picks himself up off the floor, following the sound of his ringing phone into the hallway, and starts the end of the world all over again.


End file.
